Miriam, who found this exchange and originally sent it onward, is a Jewish member of "Justice for Palestinians" Calgary, and an activist in a number of other causes such a Project Ploughshares Calgary. The addressees in her forward are those of us who are other JFP folks. The "rabble blog" posting and its response from an Israeli Jew are very heartening indeed.

I wholeheartedly agree with every word of your letter to Premier Wynne.As an Israeli who wishes his country to flourish and prosper, survive andprogress, I must ask all overseas friends to tighten the screws and increase the economic pressure, and all other forms of non-violent pressure – social, cultural and international, over my homeland.

The harassment I see all around me practiced against all Palestiniancivilians, the incredible harsh bureaucratic oddities, not to say cruelties aresomething that has nothing to do with protection against ballistic missiles or atomic bombs. Schoolchildren barred from reaching their kindergartens, doctors barred from reaching their patients – are none of them Iranian warplane pilots, and they should not be punished – no matter what dark designs some nations may have about Israel.

The daily piling up of rough handling, arbitrary moving people aroundand ordering them at gun-point, without any written law, to just run around or hold still or crouch on the ground for hours – such degrading inhuman practices must stop tomorrow afternoon, whether or not Palestine wins independence this year or next or the one after.

This piling up, if not stopped, will render all future settlementsless successful. The deposits of aggravation, injustice and pointlessness with be too heavy. We must protect our peoples – the Israeli and the Palestinian – against being so roughly beaten up that a belated flowering of understanding, compassion and cooperation will become too difficult to materialize and emerge.

For this purpose I am prepared to stand austerity and frugality imposedupon my country until she mends her ways.

Heartening indeed. The damage done by the perpetrator is indeed damaging to the perpetrator as well as to the Palestinian people. Those of us who stand in complacent are not innocent--we need to speak out against the colonization that continues to happen of which our own nation is backing.

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